Configuration¶

TNH Scholar requires some initial configuration to function properly. This guide covers the essential configuration steps and options.

Environment Setup¶

OpenAI API Key¶

TNH Scholar's AI functionality requires an OpenAI API key. To configure this:

Obtain an API key from OpenAI's platform
Set the environment variable:

# Linux/Mac
export OPENAI_API_KEY='your-api-key-here'

# Windows
set OPENAI_API_KEY=your-api-key-here

In development configuration (where you have downloaded the tnh-scholar repository) you can also use a .env file in your project directory:

OPENAI_API_KEY=your-api-key-here

Directory Structure¶

TNH Scholar creates and uses the following directory structure:

~/.config/tnh-scholar/
├── prompts/          # User prompt overrides
└── logs/            # Log files

Prompt Configuration¶

Prompt Directory¶

Prompts can be stored in:

Repo-local default workspace: ./tnh-prompts/ when running from the tnh-scholar repo root
User override location: ~/.config/tnh-scholar/prompts/
Custom location specified by TNH_PROMPT_DIR environment variable

To use a custom prompt directory:

export TNH_PROMPT_DIR=/path/to/prompts

Default Prompts¶

The current prototype workflow uses the tracked repo-local tnh-prompts/ workspace. Bundled runtime prompts remain available in src/tnh_scholar/runtime_assets/prompts/, and ~/.config/tnh-scholar/prompts/ can be used for local overrides.

Configuration File¶

The system looks for configuration in this order:

Command line arguments
Environment variables
Workspace config: ./.tnh-gen.json (or .vscode/tnh-scholar.json)
User-level config: ~/.config/tnh-scholar/tnh-gen.json

Example configuration file:

{
  "prompt_catalog_dir": "/path/to/prompts",
  "default_model": "gpt-5-mini",
  "max_dollars": 0.30,
  "max_input_chars": 120000,
  "default_temperature": 1.0,
  "api_key": "sk-..."
}

Initial Setup¶

The tnh-setup command automates configuration:

# Full setup
tnh-setup

# Skip specific steps
tnh-setup --skip-env        # Skip API key check
tnh-setup --skip-prompts   # Skip prompt setup guidance

This will:

Create necessary directories
Prepare the user prompt directory and report prompt locations
Check for OpenAI API key
Set up basic configuration